Games, Entertainment, Geek Culture

Our E3 2018 wishlist…

We’re a couple of months away from E3 where a lot of the latest games are announced or new footage is shown for games that are already known about. Traditionally my friends and I will watch the press conferences for Sony, Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft (and Nintendo on their own schedule) and get excited for the cool looking or fun surprises. There’s also usually a healthy amount of mockery of the crowbarred in celebrity stuff which is pretty much always cringe-inducing.

With that in mind, I thought I’d discuss some of the things I’m hoping to see this year, I’d say most may be wishful thinking but sometimes you just have to be optimistic. To be fair if one of these makes it on to the show in some fashion then I’ll be pretty chuffed, and there’s also the knowledge that there will likely be lots of things that aren’t even on my radar or that I’ve forgotten about.

Shenmue 3 – Originally announced in 2015 with a Kickstarter that I contributed to there hasn’t been a lot seen of it since then bar a few screenshots and a little in-game footage. This is a game I honestly thought would never happen so I’m hoping for more footage to consume and hopefully even an estimated release date. I’m also hoping Sega will get their shit together and announce HD remasters of the original games.

Final Fantasy 7 remake –This was the first RPG that I ever played and had a huge bearing on my falling in love with the genre. With that in mind, this remake is a huge deal for me and I’m hoping something will be shown which gives some indication of the progress. I’m not optimistic about seeing anything this year though as the last update I saw was that Square was recruiting more people to work on the game to make sure the quality is up to expectation.

Red Dead Redemption 2 –Providing there are no further delays to this one it’s due out in October and is most likely going to be the biggest game of the year. I’m not expecting anything that’s going to make me want the game anymore, it’s more that I’m just hoping to see more of it just to get a better idea of what’s going to be on offer upon release. The downside is that any new footage is just going to make the wait for release even more infuriating.

Dragon Age 4 – I’ve just finished the DLC for Inquisition which leaves a huge plot point for the next Dragon Age, and Bioware has already said the sequel is being worked on which naturally makes me want more information. I suspect this one is going to be unlikely as I’m expecting that Bioware is more likely to be concentrating on Anthem. As an aside Anthem is the first Bioware game in absolutely years that I’m really not interested in.

Pokemon on the Switch –The best news about the Switch for me was that there’s a proper Pokemon game on the way for it. This is exciting as I’m a huge fan of the Pokemon games and a Switch version has enormous potential given the power of the machine in comparison to the 3DS. I’m not sure if we’ll see around E3 or if Nintendo will be concentrating on other games but fingers crossed that something will be shown off.

Halo 6 –The weirdest thing for me about the release of the Xbox One X (apart from the terrible name) is that there was nothing that I considered a real flagship game like Halo to come out at the same time. I’m not sure if this year is the year for a new Halo but I hope it is and I’m really hoping that with the increased power available and the time they’ve had to work on it that if/when 343 do reveal the new Halo that it’s truly something special.

Something Mass Effect related –Again with Anthem on the table I’m not expecting much but given the disaster that Andromeda turned out to be overall (although I enjoyed the game for the most part), coupled with Bioware essentially abandoning it I personally think it would be a sound idea for there to be some kind of Mass Effect presence if only to re-assure a fanbase that seems a little jaded from what I can see online. Could we see a sequel of some kind, or maybe even the original trilogy remaster that people are clamouring for?

A new Fable –There have been a fair few rumblings of a new Fable being in the works currently. As it stands nothing has been confirmed but a new Fable is one of those games that would immediately pique my interest. Obviously, it’s not going to be made by Lionhead now but it might be that if it’s real then a new team working on it might be able to come up with new ideas that re-invigorate the franchise and offer another Xbox exclusive.

A new Elder Scrolls –Skyrim originally came out in 2011 so it’s now been a bigger gap to a new iteration than the gap between Oblivion and Skyrim. I’m not sure if it’s likely due to Bethesda still cranking out content for The Elder Scrolls Online, and presumably with other games to come out. But given that Fallout 4 was a couple of years ago I’m hoping that this is the year we get a current generation Elder Scrolls game. That being said if Bethesda wanted to offer up a placeholder of an HD remaster of Morrowind then I’d be ok with that.

Spyro remaster –I loved Spyro on my original Playstation when I was much younger, for me, it was the first decent 3D platformer. It was announced that the original PS1 trilogy is getting the remaster treatment like Crash Bandicoot did last year and I couldn’t be happier about this news. Literally, all I’m really wanting at this point is to see some footage to get properly excited about and a release date would be nice, hopefully, later in the year all being well.

Spiderman –The new Spiderman game looks promising from early footage shown at last years E3, superhero games have come along in the last few years with the likes of Infamous and Crackdown so this new Spiderman game could be very good. The plus point is that Insomniac, who are developing, isn’t being tied to a specific movie license so it could actually be a licensed superhero game that doesn’t try to cram in specific things from films. Regardless I’m interested to see how it’s coming along as it’s due out this year at some point.

Indie games –Every year Sony and Microsoft tend to have a bit of a focus on the Indie games that are being developed, these reveals tend to be incredibly interesting as you will see things that you wouldn’t necessarily expect. It’s always fun when you see a trailer for something you didn’t know anything about but which resonates with you. Ori and the Blind Forest got me a few years ago and I’m always keen to see what new ideas developers can come up with so it’ll be good to see what’s on offer this year.

So yeah, that’s my early wishlist of what I want to see at E3 this year, who knows if any of it will actually pan out but we shall see. Hopefully, there will be the usual surprises to be had where games get announced where no one has known anything about them. While it’s fun to know exactly what’s going on with games it’s also nice to be surprised.